‘They Don't Seem That Interested in Us’: Young Immigrants' Construction of Discursive Barriers to Intergroup Contact With the Majority Population

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the literature on intergroup relations by examining how young immigrants construct discursive barriers to intergroup contact with the majority population. The study is based on three focus group discussions conducted with young immigrants originating from the Middle East currently living in Northern Savo, Finland. More precisely, we examined instances in the discussions in which participants negotiated their experiences of encounters, or lack thereof, with the Finnish majority. Using critical discursive psychology, we analysed how the participants living in a specific local context constructed and used subject positions and meta‐perceptions in talk to rationalise existing barriers to intergroup contact; to hold certain social actors accountable for the existence of barriers; and, for their own part, to account for their own responses to them. In participants' accounts, these discursive constructions depicted intergroup contact as difficult to establish by portraying representatives of different groups as positioned within unequal conditions of recognition, everyday opportunity structures and lived experiences. The study's findings demonstrate how the minority youths' agency is shaped and reduced by, for example, majority norms, local institutions, majority stereotypes and unequal access to shared spaces and opportunities, thereby highlighting the role of meta‐perceptions in intergroup contact. Please refer to the section to find this article's Community and Social Impact.